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How a landmark trial against Fox News could change libel law · Apple News Today

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  Gideon Resnick, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, April 14th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, federal authorities have arrested a suspect they believe is responsible for leaking classified U.S. intelligence, how millionaires might soon gentrify the moon, plus, why some of the biggest stars in the NBA spent a lot of time on the bench this season.
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  But first, jury selection is officially underway in a landmark trial against "Fox News." Dominion Voting Systems is suing "Fox News" for defamation, saying that "Fox" spread false claims that the voting technology company rigged the 2020 election by flipping millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. "Fox" says it's protected by the First Amendment.
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  It's famously difficult to win a defamation lawsuit against a media company in the United States. That's thanks in part to the 1964 Supreme Court ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan.
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  Brian Stelter: This 1964 case provided broad protections for the American press, protections that journalists in many other countries envy to this day.
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  That's Brian Stelter. He's the former chief media correspondent at "CNN," and he'll be covering the trial as a special correspondent for "Vanity Fair."
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  Brian Stelter: Essentially, this rule in 1964 made it hard for public figures to sue the media, for celebrities, politicians, you know, millionaires and billionaires. If you're a public figure, there's a very high bar that you have to be able to clear in order to sue a news outlet and win.
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  This high bar comes down to something called "actual malice," which means that a news outlet reported something that they knew was false, or they did it with reckless disregard for the truth.
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  Brian Stelter: This Supreme Court ruling set up a standard that almost nobody has been able to meet. I mean, yes, there are defamation cases, there are suits from time to time. But they're often thrown out because how in the world can you prove that a journalist knew something was false and published it anyway? So that high bar provides broad protection for the press, but it also has the consequence of making it a lot easier for news outlets to be sloppy.
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  Now, many legal experts say Dominion has a particularly strong case. That's because, in the discovery phase of this trial, we've gotten a rare window into the inner workings of "Fox News" through private messages between "Fox" producers, hosts and executives.
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  This includes actual text messages from "Fox News" stars, like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, insulting Donald Trump, saying they didn't believe the election fraud conspiracies, and undermining the credibility of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who was often featured on "Fox News" repeating lies about election interference. This all ran counter to what the hosts were broadcasting on-air.
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  Brian Stelter: Reading through hundreds of pages of documents, these texts and emails, it brought "Fox News" to life like I've never seen before. As I was going through these pages, I was thinking "Fox" is never gonna be the same. And frankly, the media world is never gonna be the same.
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  The trial is set to begin early next week, and Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages. And the outcome of this case will likely have implications not only for "Fox News" but for the media more broadly.
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  To learn more about this case and the inner workings of "Fox News," check out our latest episode of "Apple News In Conversation." Stelter spent years talking to people at "Fox," mostly anonymous sources, and he reveals to Shumita in this episode what his sources are telling him these days. They also talk about whether the protections we currently have in place for the press and free speech actually serve our democracy well.
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  Federal authorities believe 21-year-old Jack Teixeira is responsible for the leak of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents that we told you about earlier in the week. He was taken into custody yesterday at his home in Massachusetts, where he's a member of the Air National Guard based on Cape Cod. Here's U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announcing the arrest.
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  Merrick Garland: Today, the Justice Department arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.
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  As "The Guardian" points out, Garland's word choice there seems to indicate that Teixeira will be charged under the Espionage Act. If prosecutors pursue each leaked document as a separate count in an indictment and if Teixeira is found guilty, he could be facing a long prison sentence. Hundreds of secret and top-secret materials were leaked, revealing sensitive information that was meant for senior military and intelligence leaders. Each charge under the Espionage Act comes with a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
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  Federal authorities believe Teixeira was the leader of an online chat group on Discord, where a few dozen people, mostly men and teenagers, came together during the pandemic to discuss their shared love of guns, military gear and video games. Classified documents started appearing in the group late last year and continued through March, where they spread across the Internet from there. "The Washington Post" interviewed several members, including a minor, who spoke anonymously with permission from their parents.
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  Anonymous Chat Group Member: I don't think that there was a goal nor some sort of accomplishment that he was looking for in sharing these documents. Of course, there's some anti-government sentiment, but that's not unlike most right-wingers in the modern day and age.
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  [END THE WASHINGTON POST ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Teixeira is scheduled to appear in court for the first time later today in Boston. The investigation into the leak is still open and ongoing. Authorities say they want to understand how a 21-year-old National Guardsman was able to access such top-secret material in the first place.
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  Millionaires and billionaires aren't just traveling to space. Now, some are hoping to be the first real estate developers to build homes on the moon. "Town & Country" reporter Spencer Bailey writes about the new kind of space race looming on the horizon.
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  Spencer Bailey: Well, you hear the term "space race," and you mostly think of engines and space shuttles and that kind of thing. But I actually think what all of that is leading to is innovation in other places and spaces, which is not only architecture but real estate.
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  The global space economy has massive potential. By one estimate, it's valued at a staggering $424 billion.
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  Bailey: And when I realized that, it became a lot less surprising to think that there are actively, in the case of this story, real estate agents all over the world who are now starting to think about, "Okay, I've done what I can here. What about the moon? What about Mars?"
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  Over the last decade or so, a Danish architect named Bjarke Ingels started asking that same question. He's a lifelong fan of sci-fi comics and his firm has developed a reputation for pursuing all kinds of gutsy, sci-fi inspired projects. He built a high-rise in Manhattan that resembles a distorted pyramid and a power plant in Copenhagen topped with a ski slope. Now, he wants to bring the same kind of real estate innovation to the moon.
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  Bailey: Part of his fascination with that is not just this notion of where are we going here on Earth, but where are we going in the universe, in the cosmos? And he's kind of actively run up on different people who are involved in that conversation and making that happen.
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  One expert told Bailey it's not hard to imagine a future where people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos own properties on the moon. And when Bailey asked an aerospace engineer at Rutgers about the realistic timeline for long-term living in space, he said we can expect to see people take "extended stays" on the moon within the next 10 years. With a few more decades…
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  Bailey: We could very well see the development of small towns, or even a small city, over the next century or two on the moon, which is pretty staggering when you think about it. But maybe not necessarily surprising given how fast some of this technology is developing.
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  The NBA playoffs will formally begin this weekend, and some of the league's biggest stars are in the mix once again. Steph Curry, LeBron James, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo to name a few.
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  So, as of now, they are all thankfully healthy after a season in which load management was a priority. That's a tactic where teams decide to sit players out for certain games in order to preserve their health for the playoffs. Essentially, they're playing the long game here, deciding what sacrifices they are willing to make during the regular season to optimize their chances of winning it all in the end.
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  But for some fans and ticket holders, it's been upsetting to not see their favorite players on the court as much as they'd like. So, to try to offset this trend, recently the NBA and the Players Association came to a new bargaining agreement. One of the stipulations is that players have to play a certain number of games to be considered for particular postseason awards.
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  Now, all the criticisms aside, "The Wall Street Journal" notes that load management does, in fact, seem to work. A few years back, Kawhi Leonard sat out nearly two dozen games before going on to play every playoff game and winning the championship. Steph Curry, a big draw for fans across the U.S., sat out some games at the end of last season before another successful title run.
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  This weekend, those two will once again start the long road to the finals.
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're listening in the Apple News app right now, stick around. This week's episode of "Apple News In Conversation" about the case against "Fox News" is queued up to play next.
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  So sit back and check that out. Thank you so much for hanging out with me this week! Shumita is gonna be back with the news on Monday.
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